Easy Come, Easy Go

Of course Senator Kerry will pay the $500,000 Massachusetts tax he dodged on his yacht. After all, why does he care? It’s not his money.

Kerry is the only human being since Cleopatra to marry not one, but two billionaires. Heck, even his wives weren’t self-made. They inherited their fortunes from husbands. Unlike a self-made billionaire, Kerry didn’t spend decades risking everything to build his fortune. He has no clue what enormous economic creativity and persistence it took to create the fortune he so dearly enjoys. Kerry won his wealth in a gigolo lottery and he won’t miss a chunk of it.

Perhaps if we could lay hands on a real reporter, we could get him to ask Kerry if he was paying those taxes from money that he personally earned or if he was just looting the Heinz family’s trust.

17 thoughts on “Easy Come, Easy Go”

  1. Rockefeller and Ted Kennedy inherited theirs, suggesting that, somewhere back in the pedigree, somebody had some intelligence. Kerry has no such record and I would have slightly more respect for him if he had stolen it.

  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry

    “Kerry and his second wife, Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz III, a Republican, and former United Nations interpreter were … married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket. … The Forbes 400 survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750 million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165 million to as high as $3.2 billion, according to a study in the Los Angeles Times. Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry is the wealthiest U.S. Senator. Kerry is wealthy in his own name, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family members, including his mother, who died in 2002. … Kerry and Heinz signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry’s financial disclosure form for 2002 put his personal assets in the range of $409,000 to $1.8 million, with additional assets held jointly by Kerry and his wife in the range of $300,000 to $600,000.”

    Nobody writes checks that big off of that kind of net-worth. It is most reasonable to suppose that Teri paid the tax, she probably owns the yacht too. It is also undoubtedly true that Teri owns very little in her own name. The odds are the most substantial assets, including the yacht, are tied up in trusts and family partnerships, and will go her 3 Heinz sons when she passes.

    As for Kerry’s record of marrying well, I do not know if Kerry’s first wife was nearly as wealthy as his second.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Thorne

    She was very much a scion of the WASP establishment, and her family was undoubtedly wealthy, but they were not in the Heinz’ league.

    Of course JFK is not the only one to ever marry well:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Harriman

    The following list does not include extended interludes with Gianni Agnelli, and Baron Elie de Rothschild.:

    Mrs. Randolph Churchill (1939-1945)
    Mrs. Leland Hayward (1960-1971)
    Mrs. Averell Harriman (1971-1997)

    However, the world record holders for marrying well are the House of Hapsburg.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg

    Archduke Maximilian I acquired control of the Low Countries on August 16, 1477, by marrying Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, who had inherited them from her father Charles the bold, who had died in battle earlier that year. Their son, Phillip the Fair married Joanna of Castile, (a/k/a Juana la Loca), heiress of Spain. Phillip and Joan had six children, the eldest of whom became Charles V and inherited the the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, Southern Italy, Austria and the Low Countries.

  3. John Kerry has a modest trust from his family. When he got divorced from his first wife,rumor in Boston area was he received alimony from her !!! He lived in modest apartments and condos,while Lt Gov and then US Senator.He didnt MOVE into Lewisburg Sq,Nantucket and Sun Valley until he hit pay dirt with Mrs Heinz-The guy hasnt earned a dime in his life,and he is an arrogant SOB..He would walk into Deluca’s Market on Charles St,and skip the line when it came time to pay,claiming he was a US Senator,and didnt have time to wait !!!

  4. Robert Schwartz,

    Archduke Maximilian I acquired control of the Low Countries on August 16, 1477, by marrying Mary, Duchess of Burgundy…

    Heh, I’m going out on limb here and say the family didn’t make a profit on that one.

  5. Any guy who marries two billionaires has my profound respect. he is no dummy! What do I care how he got his money? Earned it? MNarried it? He didn’t steal it, I assume, so under our free enterprise system, bless the man and count me among the envious.

  6. “Heh, I’m going out on limb here and say the family didn’t make a profit on that one.”

    Am I missing something? The low countries a/k/a the Netherlands included what is now Belgium and the Netherlands and was the richest land in Europe at that time. Phillip II bankrupted Spain trying to maintain control over the Netherlands.

  7. Maybe the best approach to economic growth would be to teach gigolo-skills courses in college, so that all guys could marry rich women. And equivalent courses could be taught to the women so they could all marry rich men. Economic problems solved!

    I sort of think there may be something wrong with the above approach, but not having drunk my full ration of coffee today, I can’t figure out what it is. It seems at least as rational as many aspects of Obamanomics.

  8. My understanding of Kerry’s story was that he spent his childhood with fairly wealthy grandparents while his own parents were government employee middle class. From Wikipedia:

    As a child, Kerry served as an altar boy. Although the extended family enjoyed a great fortune, Kerry’s parents themselves were upper-middle class; a wealthy great aunt paid for Kerry to attend elite schools in Europe and New England. Kerry spent his summers at the Forbes family estate in Brittany, and there, he enjoyed a more opulent lifestyle than he had previously known in Massachusetts. While living in the U.S., Kerry spent several summers at the Forbes family’s estates on Naushon Island off Cape Cod.[citation needed]

    That is where he got his appetite from wealth. I think he is probably the most disgusting individual presently serving in COngress although Alcee Hastings would give him a close race. His first run for Congress was as a supporter of the Vietnam War. He lost and then found his theme.

  9. I might add that my daughter-in-law was visiting a friend in Boston during the 2004 campaign. The friend lived on Beacon Hill, not far from Kerry’s mansion. The two girls were sitting up in nightgowns talking about midnight when they heard the Kerry entourage returning to Louisburg Square. They threw on robes and slippers and ran down the hill to see the goings on. There, they stood watching and the cops came over to see what they wanted. Well, pretty soon all the cops and most of the Secret Service guys were talking to these two cute girls in robes and slippers. Shelly has always trended conservative and she got an earful that night. The Boston cops told them that they were called to the Kerry home at least twice a month to stop her from beaning him with lamps and various household items. She was drunk most of the time.

    She is a really sad case, I suspect. Heinz was probably a real man and died in that plane crash. Now she bought herself another senator with Heinz money and got Lurch, a pretty poor substitute.

  10. PenGun,

    John McCain married one millionaire not two billionaires. He himself came from a wealthy, military family. More importantly, John McCain in general supports lower taxes and pays his taxes. In fact, he has something of a mania for it. The Democrats tried like hell to find something sleazy on him in 2008 but never could.

    I was never a big McCain fan but he’s nowhere the gigolo and hypocrite that Kerry is.

  11. What about Catherine of Aragon? I believe the Tudors were quite the wealthy family. While both marriages to the Tudor brothers were not stellar I like to think she did ok.

  12. Who can forget the uproar when Henry, Count of Anjou eloped to England with Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. Queen Elizabeth still claims the titles of Duchess of Aquitaine, Countess of Anjou and Queen of the French (Rex Francorum) as a result.

  13. “I like to think she did ok”

    Did OK? All of the troubles in the modern world can be traced to when Spanish Cathy got hitched to Hank Tudor.

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